


time was looking back at me

by spiralpegasus



Series: Sylvix Week 2019 [7]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Fluff without Plot, M/M, Post-Blue Lions Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), it's just sylvain and felix with a cute kid, mild spoilers for bl route and lin and bernie's paired ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 12:08:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21099233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiralpegasus/pseuds/spiralpegasus
Summary: Seeing Felix with Bernadetta's daughter makes Sylvain consider what it means to share a future together.Or, Felix is surprisingly good with children.Sylvix Week 2019 Day Seven: Family





	time was looking back at me

**Author's Note:**

> i.... wanted this to be a lot longer but this week is rlly taking it out of me man ahaha. hopefully it's still a fun, cute read
> 
> title is from egg and soldiers by cosmo sheldrake, my favorite weird musician

“Uncle Fe-Fe!”

A little girl with dark green hair sprints out of the reception hall at full tilt. She stumbles in the grass, rights herself, and keeps running towards Felix. Sylvain laughs as Felix crouches down to receive her in his arms; she thuds against Felix’s chest and he wraps his arms around her in a hug.

“Up! Up! Up!” she demands gleefully, and Felix wraps an arm under her thighs and scoops her effortlessly off the ground. She sits face-to-face with him in his arms, grinning uncontrollably.

“Hello, Amalia,” he greets her seriously. She squishes his cheeks between her tiny hands and giggles.

“No hello for Uncle Sylvain?” Sylvain asks her, hooking his chin over Felix’s shoulder with a pout. She sticks her tongue out at him.

“Good,” Felix tells her. She laughs again, patting Felix’s cheeks. His expression doesn’t change, which she finds even funnier.

“You’re a terrible influence on her, Fe,” Sylvain says fondly, tilting his head to give Felix’s jaw a quick peck. 

“Gross!” Amalia complains, still laughing. She starts to squirm, so Felix sets her back down on the ground.

“Amalia,” Bernadetta calls worriedly from the door to the reception hall. She’s still nervous about going outside, it seems, because she trembles in the doorway, but the fact that she’s come out to greet them at all is a huge improvement.

“Mom! Mom! Mom!” Amalia shrieks with delight. She starts to run, trips, falls onto her knees in the grass, scrambles back to her feet, and keeps running back to her mother.

“Th-thank you for coming,” Bernadetta says with a shaky smile as Felix and Sylvain approach the door. Amalia wraps herself around her mother’s legs, bouncing excitedly on her toes, and Bernadetta pets an absent hand through her daughter’s messy hair.

“It’s good to see you,” Felix says, lifting Bernadetta’s hand and giving it a kiss as is custom for Adrestian nobles. It’s an overly formal gesture meant to make her laugh more than anything, and he considers it a success when she giggles. 

“We’re always glad to call upon the lovely Count Varley,” Sylvain adds with a flirtatious wink. He picks up the hand that Felix just released and gives it an exaggerated _mwah._

“Oh, stop,” she says, still a bit jittery but significantly more relaxed than she was. “We gave up our titles a long time ago.”

“You and Linhardt caused quite a stir in Old Adrestia with that one,” Sylvain says, almost wistfully. “It was nice to see the political turmoil take place someplace other than Faerghus for once.”

“Where is your useless husband, anyway?” Felix asks. Amalia tugs on the hem of his shirt, and he lowers one of his arms for her to climb onto and dangle from. “Still asleep?”

“Oh, don’t be rude to him, Felix,” Bernadetta chides, slapping his arm. She still looks a little surprised with herself every time she does something like that, but she relaxes almost immediately when Felix’s lips twitch upward. “He’s… well, yes, he’s sleeping! But the baby’s napping, too!”

“If the baby’s asleep too, it’s parenting,” Sylvain says wisely.

“Isaac’s boring,” Amalia complains, hanging from Felix’s outstretched arm upside-down by her knees. Felix grips one of her ankles with his other hand just in case she slips. “He just sleeps and cries.”

“He’s a baby. That’s what they do.” Felix swings his arm back and forth, and Amalia swings with it, squealing in glee. “You used to do that, too.”

“Did not!” she yells.

“Did too,” Felix says seriously.

“You did,” Bernadetta says, a little apologetically. “Felix, you’re going to drop her.”

“No, I won’t.” Felix swings Amalia high enough that he can loop his other arm under her, holding her more securely against his chest to alleviate some of Bernadetta’s anxiety. Undeterred, Amalia clambers up Felix’s torso and onto his shoulders.

“You’re such a little monkey,” Sylvain says with some amazement. Amalia, now sitting proudly on Felix’s shoulders with her ankles in Felix’s firm grip, sticks her tongue out at Sylvain.

“I have a class to teach very soon,” Bernadetta tells them, wringing her hands. “Do you mind watching her for a little bit? I’d usually wake Lin, but—”

“No worries,” Felix interrupts before Bernadetta can work her anxiety back up. He tips his head up so Amalia knows he’s talking to her. “What do you think we should do while your mother teaches?”

“Swords!” Amalia chirps.

Nodding gravely, Felix starts walking towards the training grounds. “Excellent choice.”

“Swords,” Sylvain mutters, shaking his head in disbelief as he follows his husband and his niece.

* * *

Amalia is both a lot like a younger Felix, and nothing like younger Felix at all.

It’s a nostalgic thing, sitting at the edge of the training pitch and watching Felix wave a sword around. Sylvain tips his face up to the sunlight as Felix walks Amalia through basic sword forms; she’s not a very quick study, but the concentration on her face speaks to the effort she’s putting in.

Amalia approaches her training with the same single-minded focus as Felix, and she’s determined to master everything she sets out to do. In this way, she’s very similar to what Felix was like when he was a kid – Sylvain remembers Felix’s trembling pout every time Glenn beat him in a fight, and his tearful promises that he’d win next time.

But for Felix, this kind of training was a necessity, not something he did for fun. Children of Faerghus are taught to fight before they’re taught to read. It’s a cold, desolate place in which strength and Crests matter more than anything else does. King Dimitri is setting out to change that, but he can’t change the mark that kind of upbringing left on Felix. On all of them.

Amalia trains because she wants to. She trains because she loves to show her parents what she’s learned and hear their praise. This is a game to her. In this way, she’s nothing like Felix was at all.

It’s heartening to see a child playing at war who will hopefully never have to fight in one.

“Your stance is too wide,” Felix is saying, gently nudging Amalia’s foot with one of his own. “You want to be stable, but you want to be able to move at a moment’s notice.”

“Mhm,” Amalia says, pursing her lips and carefully imitating the position Felix shows her. Her little green dress and the ribbons on her shoes are a funny contrast to the fully-sized training sword gripped in her tiny hands. Felix’s hands, scarred from years of combat, reach down to adjust her unblemished fingers on the hilt.

Sylvain’s heart feels full, spilling up through his chest and into a lump in his throat. Felix’s hands, so scarred from violence, are still capable of so much gentleness. His expression is soft and patient as he demonstrates the move to Amalia, slower this time; his lips, sliced through with a scar from a sword that got too close, curve up into a smile when she succeeds. When he twists to show Amalia a parry, his old limp is visible, the one he got when his hip was crushed under a cavalier’s horse.

He’s survived so much. He and Sylvain have both survived so much.

Amalia’s eyes twinkle as she watches him closely, like Felix has the whole world in his hands instead of a brittle old training sword. Her face is bright and open, its only scar a little nick on her cheek from a tumble she took from a tree. She’s clumsy, but with youth, not with an old injury.

Running his fingers across his wedding band, Sylvain thinks about what it might be like if Amalia was their own daughter, not Bernadetta’s.

“Sylvain?” Felix calls, and Sylvain snaps his attention back to his husband. Felix is standing beside a curious Amalia.

“What is it, my darling Felix?” Sylvain coos, just to see Amalia giggle and cover her face with a shriek of ‘yuck!’

“They’re going to need the pitch for class soon,” Felix says, tapping his training sword on the ground. “We should go.”

“Right, right.” Sylvain gets up and stretches, his back popping. It hasn’t ever been quite the same since he took a bad fall from his horse during the war, but he gets around most days. “Anything else you wanna do with your uncles, Amalia?”

Her face brightens. “Cats!” she chirps. She scampers over to the weapons racks and carefully sets her training sword on it, and Felix follows at a more subdued pace to do the same.

“There are still a lot of cats hanging around the monastery, huh?” Sylvain asks her as she grabs his hand to tug him towards the door.

“Yes!” she says cheerfully. She waves her other hand in the air until Felix takes it in his own. “I like the orange one.”

“Does it have a name?” Felix indulges her. He has such a serious way of speaking to her that Sylvain can’t seem to imitate, like everything she says has the same gravity as a noblewoman speaking at a meeting.

“Hazelnut!” She bounces a bit as she walks. “Because I like hazelnut cookies!”

“It’s a good name,” Felix tells her, much to her delight.

She likes Sylvain just fine, but Uncle Fe-Fe is undoubtedly her favorite. Sylvain never would have assumed Felix would be good with children, but Amalia adores him. When Amalia releases their hands with a squeal to descend upon a fat orange tabby, Sylvain chances a look at Felix’s face.

His eyes are still weary with the fatigue of the war he fought, but they’re soft as he watches Amalia pet the cat. The scars on his face are healing into thin white lines. He’s smiling – not a lot, not very openly, but there’s a gentle sort of joy on his face as Amalia laughs.

“Do you think we should adopt a child of our own?” Sylvain asks him in a hushed voice, taking his hand.

“Don’t be stupid,” Felix scoffs, but the way he reddens and looks away says more than his words do. “We’re both too busy with the politics of merging our territories to bring a child into it.”

“That’s not a no,” Sylvain coaxes, leaning in to press a kiss to Felix’s indignant, blushing cheek.

“No,” Felix says as Amalia runs back up to him, cat in her arms. “It’s not.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, and i hope you enjoyed! im definitely feeling like my quality is going down as the week goes on but at least this is the second to last one,,


End file.
